


Head in the clouds

by Scoby



Series: Dinluke goodness [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Acrobatics, Actor Luke Skywalker, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blow Jobs, Grogu in a Suit, Kissing, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker Are Not Related, M/M, Meta, Minor Leia Organa, Pining, Secret Crush, Stuntperson Din Djarin, Workplace Blow Jobs, at least not explicitly, stunts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:07:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: “I’ve been wanting this for so long”, Din whispers against Luke’s lips when they stop for air.“Me, too. I’ve thought about you every time I’ve kissed Leia in this movie.”“Really? When are you kissing her next time?”“Next week. We’re shooting their final kiss before she ends up with the other guy.”“Uh-huh. Let’s see if I can give you something to think about for that scene.”-----where Luke is starring in a blockbuster scifi film, and Din is his stunt double
Relationships: Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker, Kaydel Ko Connix & Din Djarin, Kaydel Ko Connix & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker
Series: Dinluke goodness [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206977
Comments: 26
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The theme song for this fic is my favourite Skydalorian song at the moment: [Edge of glory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeWBS0JBNzQ)
> 
> Explicit content only in chapter 3, in case you want to skip :)

“Guess who just called me?”

Luke’s heart jumps at his agent’s question. He tries to hold the phone tighter against his ear to stop his hand from shaking. He has been through countless of auditions over the past months. It could be anyone of those directors. But he definitely does not dare to guess the name that he most hopes for.

“I don’t know.” He tries to sound composed.

“Lando Calrissian.”

“Holy shit”, Luke gasps but forces himself to swallow his excessive excitement and ask cautiously: “What did he say?”

His agent holds a dramatic pause before bursting it out: “You got Galaxy Wars!”

Luke covers his mouth with his free hand so that he can somewhat muffle his scream. His agent waits patiently for him to finish jumping and punching the air enough to calm down and listen to him continue:

“I’ll send you the script and your schedule by email. For the first week, it’ll be mainly readings with the cast. And on Friday, you’ll meet with your team to discuss your character.”

Hearing the words ‘your team’ begins to make the scale of the project sink into Luke’s brain. In all the indie movies he has done, he has taken care of his own make-up and hair and patched his costumes up from items collected from his own and friends’ closets. Galaxy Wars is going to be a completely different animal.

“Ok”, Luke says aloud.

“Good. And congratulations! You’ve been very resilient with auditioning, and that has payed off.”

“Thank you - for everything. I wouldn't be here without you...”

“You did it yourself. You should go and celebrate.”

“I will.”

They finish the call, and Luke jumps around his tiny apartment and screams until his throat goes sore.

* * *

Lando takes Luke around a room full of people, and he shakes hands with everyone: his hair stylist, make-up artist, assistant make-up artist, costume lead, three costume designers, personal props designer, two assistants… Luke strives to remember even half of the names, but all of those get wiped out from his head when they reach the last person.

“This is Din Djarin, your stunt double”, Lando introduces and Luke holds out his hand. Din takes it and squeezes tight enough for the muscles on his arm to swell. Luke stares at his arm a little too long before remembering to gaze up at his face and introduce himself one more time. And once their eyes meet, it is difficult to turn away anymore.

Luke finds himself momentarily lost in the dark brown depths of Din’s eyes that are not turning away either. But eventually, he becomes conscious of Lando still waiting by his side for the meeting to get ready to start. Luke lets go of Din’s hand and pulls Lando aside, hopefully out of hearing distance.

“Errr, are you sure he looks enough like me?” Luke whispers.

“Don’t you worry about that”, Lando says with a wide smile. “It’s up to the hair and make-up team to take care of. Your heights match more or less, and that’s enough.”

“But what about…?” Luke lifts his hands against the sides of his skinny shoulders and moves them wider out to imply what in Din’s body is out of proportion in comparison to him.

It only makes Lando laugh heartfully. “Trust me, kid, by the time you’re ready with your training for this role, you’ll be equally bulked up. Shall we start?”

Luke nods. He cannot come up with any more arguments against Din, so he has to stop arguing. Because he is definitely not going to say aloud his most important concern: he does not want his stunt double to look this attractive.

This is Luke's first film on this scale. This could become the breakthrough for his career. He absolutely needs to be fully focused on the set, not distracted by a hot stunt guy. But Lando is already clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention, so all Luke can do is to sit down, breathe deep and try to keep his eyes on the speaker.

The speaking goes on for a long time. Luke sees dozens of sketches of himself with alternative looks. Lando takes notes of Luke's opinions about each one but says that he will take the decisions with the designers later. When Lando is immersed in examining a detailed, symbolic embroidery in the collar of one of the sketched jackets, Luke risks another glance at Din, who has been silent throughout the whole meeting. His stomach makes a wild flip when he notices that Din is already looking at him, too.

He quickly tries to stop himself from over-interpreting it. After all, almost twenty people have been staring very intently at him for nearly two hours already. Everyone has been studying the details of his face and body from their own point of view. Chances are that Din is only studying - whatever stunt performers need to study about the actors they double. But it certainly feels different to be conscious about his gaze than of the others’.

Then, Lando lifts his eyes from the paper. “I don’t like it. The symbolism is good but the ornament is too elaborate for Rory’s character. You can have another go and see if you can communicate it in a more subtle way. Or alternatively, we go with the more Japan-influenced option.”

The young costume designer nods and packs the sketches into a folder along with a slip of notes, and Lando addresses Luke again:

“I think we have a good set of material for the look. I’d say we check out the physicality now. Luke, can you show a bit what your thoughts are about how Rory would stand and move?”

“Yeah, sure.” Luke stands up and walks to the clear area beside the tables and chairs. “Well, since he has grown up on a farm and got used to working with his hands in the dirt, I think he’d be sort of very grounded and steady, like…”

He makes his best grounded and steady stance and moves a little around the space. He has done this kind of simple farmboy characters before and been always praised about the genuine way he embodies them. Lando follows his movements intently with squinted eyes and pinches his moustache in thought.

“What do you think, Din?” Lando asks.

Din clears his throat and speaks for the first time – with a voice that seems to crawl straight into Luke’s spine and up along it:

“I understood it more like droids or something do the farmwork in that universe, and the guy has plenty of time for dreaming. Anyway, it’s on a desert planet, so they probably don’t even farm on the ground, more like somehow harvest moisture from the air for an aeroponics system. And then there’s that line about him: ‘All his life has he looked away, to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was.’ So I imagined Rory more, sort of, airy, you know, head in the clouds, feet outward, weight on the toes…”

He stands up and shows what he means with his body, transforming seamlessly from a badass stuntman into an adorable cutie.

“Let’s see you try that, Luke”, Lando says.

Luke copies Din’s posture as closely as possible, using his verbal cues to chase for the same effect. When he walks around the space with a new, slightly bouncier stride, Lando contently slams his hands together.

“There you go! I like that.”

He asks for a few other moves: running, jumping, kneeling, squatting, picking up things and using Rory’s hands for simple tasks. Some of those Luke has to repeat a few times to get a proper feel for the character, and a few times Din has to help him figure out the most fitting movement patterns. But all the time, Lando’s smile keeps steadily widening.

“How about the handstand?” Din asks.

“Yes, the handstand.” Lando scratches the edge of his moustache in thought. “Luke, how do you think Rory does that?”

Luke blinks in confusion. “Errr, handstand? Are there multiple ways to do that?”

“Everyone stands differently on their feet”, Din says. “Of course everyone stands differently on their hands.”

To demonstrate, he easily props his hands on the floor and lifts his legs up towards the ceiling. From there, he glances at Lando.

“Do you want it like serious, or casual, or more spiritual, or sloppy, or something else?”

As he lists options, he makes subtle shifts in his posture, pushing more up with the hands, shifting his weight a little more on one hand, leaning more on the fingers, slouching a little (yes, somehow he manages to slouch in a handstand).

“Can you go back to the previous one?” Lando asks and Din rewinds to reaching higher with his feet, weight a little more on his fingers.

“That’s it, that’s Rory!” Lando celebrates. “Can you show that with one arm?”

Din carefully shifts all his weight on one hand and picks up the other one towards the side.

“There, I like that”, Lando says, and Din floats his feet back down on the floor in a graceful arc. “I want you to teach exactly that to Luke, along with the training and action sequences.”

“To me?” Luke’s eyes widen. His education included basic acrobatics, but a one arm handstand in character is something that was not addressed in the film school.

“Yes, we need a medium close up of you in that position. You can use wires for support, especially when you’re on one arm, but the position has to look credible – and in character”, Lando explains. “There, I think we have the essence of Rory. I’d say we break for lunch now, and then we continue with the reading. Everything clear?”

Luke’s team members calmly nod their heads, and Luke hesitantly joins them, even though his own head is spinning. On one hand, his director just implied that he will get to spend a lot of time in Din's intriguing presence over the following months before they start shooting. On the other hand, he will have to do just that and should still be able to learn something instead of only staring at how the muscles move under Din's skin when he floats from one acrobatic stance to another with ease.

He cannot screw this up now, not when this many people count on him.


	2. Chapter 2

Luke closes his eyes as a make-up brush invades his face to add more powder. At least three pairs of hands appear in his clothing and hair to make small adjustments. Once the brush is out of his face, he opens his eyes and catches a sight of Din, maybe for the hundredth time today, no matter how much he has tried to tell himself to stop looking his way and focus.

This is the first day he has seen Din in exactly the same outfit with himself. He has been growing out his hair for months already. Now, it has been dyed blond, and even his eyes have been finished with blue contact lenses. Even though Luke prefers him in his own, darker features, he still apparently cannot get enough of watching him sitting across the set with Kaydel, who is chatting something inaudible that makes Din laugh in a way that lights up his whole face.

Luke would kill for the ability to make Din laugh like that. But with him, Din always stays more reserved, very focused on practicing their action sequences until their every movement matches exactly. So, while they have spent hours training together every week over the past months, Luke has arrived to the conclusion that Din is out of his reach. Still, his mind seems to refuse to stop dreaming.

His thoughts are pulled back to the scene only when Lando orders:

“Alright, team out of the shot! Silence! Take fourteen. Roll sound. Roll camera. Action!”

“Here, hold this.” Luke passes a blaster to Leia and starts untangling a cord from his belt. As Leia shoots imaginary plasma bolts at a cross taped high on the studio wall, he throws the end of the cord to an assistant who pulls it tight. Then Leia puts down the blaster in one hand, hooks the other one tight around his neck and kisses him.

“For luck”, she says, and Luke pulls the cord enough to rise on his toes.

“Cut! That was excellent, Leia. I think we have it”, Lando says and walks closer to the narrow platform where they are standing a little above the bright green floor. “Luke, we’ll take your close-up next. And what we want to show here is a spark of love interest. Just a second, before you jump, a hint that Rory is smitten by the Princess. Can you do that?”

“Sure”, Luke says and starts digging his mind for a suitable mental image. He considers using his own first kiss at the elementary school disco. After all, the feeling should come across in a similar, innocently intrigued way. But when he tries to tune into the memory, it only appears funny to him now. The few other kisses he has experienced do not exactly bring up positive associations.

“Ready?” Lando asks and Luke nods, even though he still does not quite know what to do.

On Lando's cue, they start with the same sequence for the fifteenth time: handing the blaster, throwing the cord, Leia’s arm around him, the kiss, Leia’s short line and Luke’s pull of the cord.

“Cut!” Lando shakes his head and Luke knows why. He did imitate a smitten expression with an open mouth and eyes, but it was all mechanical. He could not feel any of it inside. No wonder others could not feel it either.

“There has to be more”, Lando says. “Is there anything you can think about? Any person, or even an activity or a certain food that would sweep you off your feet? You don’t have to tell us. Just think of something.” He gives a short break for Luke to reflect before anxiously pressing on: “You have it?”

He does have one option on his mind, though he was wishing to get more time to come up with an alternative. Apparently, that is not going to happen, so he nods and they start another take.

This time, when Leia’s arm wraps tightly around his neck and she leans in, he lets his mind flood with the image of Din kissing him instead. Instantly, he feels a flush on his cheeks and his knees going weak. He barely remembers to pull the cord and look like they are about to jump.

“Cut!” Lando lifts two thumbs up. “Great job, Luke, I like that. Now, just the same again.”

They shoot ten more takes, and Luke keeps escalating the image on his mind to keep it fresh every time. Maybe Din would not hold a blaster in his other hand but it would be free to entangle into his hair. Maybe it would happen on Din’s day off so that a stubble would have grown back around his mouth and it would tickle in just the perfect way. Maybe he has also thought about doing this with Luke. Maybe he is thinking about it right now.

He ignores the impossibility of those thoughts completely and lets himself look like innocently blissed out for the camera. In the end, Lando pinches his fingertips together in the air for a delighted shake.

“Mmm, prefect, thank you! We’re done with this shot. Din and Kaydel, your turn!”

Luke and Leia share a content smile as they stumble out of the shot and give room for Din and Kaydel to take their places and clip a set of cables in the harnesses hidden under their costumes. The camera is moved to a wider angle, more to the direction of Kaydel’s face. An obvious choice, as Kaydel really does look a lot like Leia when her hair is dyed to the same shade of brown.

When Lando prompts them to start, Din and Leia copy the exact position where Luke and Leia stopped, and Din flings them both to a platform built to the other side of the studio, where they land with a crashing somersault.

Luke finds himself tensing up when he looks at it. But when both Din and Kaydel smile when they get up from the floor and are instantly ready to go again, he reminds him that he has to relax. He cannot go on freaking out every time he sees stunt doubles do their job, no matter if he has a crush on one of them or not. And over time, as they repeat the violent landing over and over again, he somewhat grows used to it.

“Good, we have it!” Lando eventually says, and Din and Kaydel clip off their wires. “That’s almost all for today. I’d still like to do a short camera trial of the trash compactor scene. I still don't know if Rory should to do the climbing stunt or not, and I need to see how it looks on camera before deciding.”

Din eyes at the clock on the studio wall. “Can we do that tomorrow? I need to go pick up Grogu from daycare.”

Lando browses his notes about their shooting schedule and scratches his head but eventually lifts a thumb up. “Ok, that’s fine, we’ll do it tomorrow. For now, we’ll just finish this scene with Luke and Leia. Can you just check that they get into the correct starting positions? We need their faces exactly at the moment of rising up after the somersault.”

Din grins adorably in relief and even smiles a little more than normal at Luke when he adjusts his hand position on the floor and the angle of his elbows to get him to rise up from exactly where Din stopped in his own shot. Then he glances at the clock again, waves a hand as a quick goodbye and hurries out of the studio.

The last shot for the day is a short one. Luke and Leia only rise up and pick up a sprint, no significant emotions displayed. Only a few takes are enough to get Lando satisfied and thanking everyone for the day. Luke chats for a while with Leia and a few of his team members before heading towards the dressing rooms. In the corridor towards them, he is overtaken by a slender brunette in a white dress and hair in two large buns. It takes him a moment to register that it is not Leia but Kaydel.

“Hey, Luke, I just wanna say you did awesome job today. That was great to watch.” She pats his back in her typically friendly way.

“Thanks, you too, though it looked pretty bad. You sure you didn't hurt yourself?”

Kaydel giggles carelessly. “Oh, you haven’t seen bad. In our last movie with Din, we did a twelve-meter free fall from a roof.”

“So you know Din beforehand?”

“Oh yes, this is my fourth movie with him.”

Luke has tried to work up the courage to ask Kaydel about Din for months already but has always shied away from it. Now, the opportunity has just fallen from the skies into his lap.

“Have you met his son?”

“Once. Last year on the Bring Your Child to Work Day. Grogu is adorable!”

Kaydel’s grin is infectious. But behind his own smile, Luke cannot stop contemplating the fact that typically children come with mothers. Din has mentioned Grogu several times, but it has seemed that he is always the one to leave at five to pick him up from daycare. It looks like either the mother does not really participate – or then she is completely out of the picture, which Luke finds himself wishing for with embarrassing ferocity.

“How about, errr, Grogu’s mother?”

Kaydel giggles again. “He hasn't told you? Grogu is a foundling. As far as I know, Din doesn’t even know his mother.”

When Kaydel catches Luke’s dumbstruck expression, her lighthearted smile turns into a smirk, and she leans closer to say: “Din is not into women.”

Like savouring how her words cause a flush to creep over Luke’s face, she pauses before adding: “In fact, I think he’s pretty into you.”

“Wh-What? What makes you think so?”

“Just… He tends to talk a lot about you. Almost as much as about his kid, and that’s a lot.”

“Well, he’s my double.”

“Doubling actors is a job for us. We generally don’t talk about our jobs more than any average person.”

“But he barely talks to me, barely notices me, you know, beyond taking exact notes about my position whenever he needs to copy it.”

“Oh, poor Din, sounds exactly like him. Only he could get that nervous when he likes somebody. Maybe I should talk to him…”

“No, please don’t!”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I am. Please promise you won’t say anything to him.”

“Ok, I promise. But you should, at some point. Because I'm sure he won’t.”

Luke swallows, completely out of words. Kaydel gives one more cherishing pat on his shoulder and flashes a wide grin before turning away to head for the stuntperformers’ dressing rooms. Luke has to lean on the wall for a while to let his racing heartbeat slow down a notch. They still have a few kissing scenes to shoot with Leia, and he just unlocked a ton of mental images to think about for those.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, feed me with kudos/comments and find me on [Tumblr](https://iamscoby.tumblr.com/)


End file.
